Star Wars or Star Trek, Apple or Google, The Battle For Supremacy and Relevancy Thrives Here.

I hereby dub this Tek | Angst Day! Time to rant! I hate that word and I vowed not be an angry blogger who just uses his site as a virtual soapbox to rant. I’m in the midst of a crummy week and I just can’t help myself so I’ve decided rare exceptions must be allowed to rant. Just know that this is as bad as it gets with my posts and being able to vent frustrations on this forum is truly therapeutic but I promise to make this a rare thing. So here it goes; below is the first of three or four posts today that will tackle a few things that just set me off:

Happy Friggin’ Birthday!

Facebook is barely tolerable most days but one thing that for me rises above all other cannon fodder I could lob its way concerns its birthday notifications. They’re like that episode of Star Trek with the cute little Tribbles that multiplied at exponential rates! I’m sure at some point I inadvertently said ok to some oblique pop up that allowed the flood of birthday notifications to enter my digital world. They’ve literally thrown up all over every screen I turn on and like Tribbles they’re multiplying exponentially now with a flood of related notifications like wanting to know if I want to purchase the birthday boy or girl a gift right after asking if I want to poke them! If I haven’t seen you since high school it was likely because I picked on you or you picked on me so frankly I don’t care that it’s your birthday. I probably accepted your friend request in a moment of curiosity to see what kind of train wreck you became or because I felt guilty for successfully blaming that particularly foul silent-but-deadly-one on you during chemistry class. Trust me for those who I genuinely care about I don’t need a FB reminder for your birthday. Those same people know that my penchant for numbers would never allow me to fail to remember such an important date.

Nevertheless when I groggily checking my iPhone’s lock screen first thing in the morning, or am at my Windows 8 login screen, or flicking through my great Fantastical calendar app, my email, my notifications bar, or last but not least opening Facebook I must be reminded of some practical stranger’s birthday nearly every day. Why gripe, was it not my fault in the first place to accept their silly friend request or somehow say yes to the notifications in the first place? I gripe because I can’t seem to stop the flood. I’m pretty tech savy and with some instances I have been able to remove those notifications but there are still many places where I have been completely unsuccessful. My notifications bar on my iPhone is the worst offender because it will not let me clear it. I must stare at it all day! For those of you who share my disdain for these very intrusive notifications I vow to find all the secret formulas for ridding your world of Facebook’s birthday notifications and devote a whole post someday to what I will dubiously call “The Great Purge”.

P.S Notification: Today is my Unbirthday! I will freely accept gifts but please poke someone else by sharing this post.